Sainte-Colombe is now a familiar name to music lovers, and his
works, until recently fallen into obscurity, have been "rediscovered"
to the delight of all lovers of music. But until this recording
the works of his son, the younger Sainte Colombe, have also not
gotten the attention they deserve.The fault may lie in the scantiness
of general biographical information, the lack of French sources,
in a limited and still mostly unpublished output, or all of these.
What little we can glean of the details of his life comes from
England where, like several of his contemporaries, this most
enigmatic of French violists settled.

The biographical uncertainty starts with Sainte Colombe the
elder. Can one identify him with Augustin Dautrcourt a musician
from Lyons-- even a violist -- and who took the surname Sainte
Colombe. Still, this does not necessarily mean that he was one and
the same as the composer Sainte Colombe who worked in Paris through
his whole career. There is also reason to believe Sainte Colombe
may have been Jean de Sainte Colombe, a Paris bourgeois who had
the two daughters Titon du Tillet attributes to the composer, who
counted an organist among his closest friends, who lived in the
same parish as many other violists -- and who actually bore the
name. We still cannot be sure.

As for the younger Sainte Colombe, there is evidence that he
was in Edinburgh in the first half of 1707, teaching viol to the
Scottish Lady Grizel Baillie (1692-1732) -- in the same city that
now, by the way, houses two of the three manuscripts collections
of Sainte-Colombe the elder brought back to Scotland by the Maule
brothers, young Scottish noblemen. The only other firm evidence
placing young Sainte-Colombe in Britain is a 1713 notice in a London
gazette of a concert, to be given on the 14th of May, "for the
benefit of Mr. St. Columbe." However, his works themselves suggest
a longer stay. They are written for a six-string viol, which strongly
indicates composition in England where the violists had not taken
up the seventh string introduced by his father and common in France
by the early 1700s. The manuscript used for this recording was
probably compiled between 1703 and 1707, starting after the elder
Sainte Colombe died, in 1701 at the latest. The younger Sainte-Colombe
might have come to England by this time.

Remond de Saint Mard, an eighteenth century writer, describes
a natural son of Sainte Colombe, possibly our composer, as a" simple
man ... who had not enough imagination to lie," recounting how his
father moved a listener to tears with a sarabande. His works indicate
that he was deeply influenced by his father's style, and that unlike
many cases of falling-off in the second generation, he became as
brilliant a composer. In view of the technical mastery of his
compositions, it is puzzling that he left so few other traces in
musical history. He seems eventually to have become an obscure viol
teacher in England, just at the time the instrument was falling
into disuse.

We are lucky that his music can tell us more than the few meager
known biographical facts. Of Sainte Colombe's viol pieces, a full
thirty-six survive in a large anthology ( MS A 27) collected by
Philip Falle (1656-1742), a canon of Durham, and now housed at the
Durham Cathedral Library. Falle, who traveled to Paris and the
United Provinces, brought back a number of viol manuscripts, among
them works by Marin Marais, Johann Schenck, Carel Hacquart, and
Jean Snep, from which he copied out his favorite passages. MS A 27
also includes various pieces, mostly French, many unpublished and
otherwise unknown. Among these are Sainte Colombe the younger's,
to which graces were added in a different ink after the manuscript
was first copied. This may suggest that Falle knew the composer
personally, or even that he may have studied with him.

The elder Sainte Colombe's influence, both as father and --
likely-- teacher is very much in evidence, both in composition and
instrumental technique.Though written at the beginning of the
eighteenth, young Sainte Colombe's music was deeply rooted in
seventeenth century tradition. Which is not to suggest any lack
of brilliance and originality in the younger composer. The son
clearly retains something of his father's improvisational verve,
but places it in a more balanced, less "baroque" framework. Of the
two, it is likely the son who had the greater compositional skill,
but one based on a foundation he owes to the older man. It can be
seen, for example, in the harmonic progression, often found in the
father's d-minor preludes, that appears here in the son's e-minor
and b-minor preludes, or in the son's employment of his father's
characteristic broken-chord formulas.

Unlike his father, he was not given to the picturesque titles
common in late French lute music. In the matter of form, except
for his Fantaisie en Rondeau, all the dances can be found in his
father's work, to which they remain close in style. Sometimes this
is the chordally-oriented "jeu d'harmonie" favored by Demachy,
sometimes the purely melodic. His preludes, although more concise
than his father's, share the time and tempo changes that are rare
in other composers of the period. The dances recall the elder Sainte
Colombe's, but without his penchant for phrases of irregular length.
However, his second e-minor courante with a panting dotted rhythm
which breaks off only at the final cadences has no parallel in
earlier French viol music. If it resembles anything, it is not
Sainte Colombe the elder but the Fantaisie Luthee from the second
book of Marin Marais. Likewise the tonalities young Saint Colombe
chooses. Only his g-minor and f-major recall his father; b-minor
appears only in the second book of Marais (1701), who undertook
f-minor only in his third book (1711).

Again unlike his father, the younger Sainte Colombe seems to
have himself organized his pieces in distinct suites. There are
definite thematic threads running through several movements of a
suite, as for example prelude and gavotte in e-minor, allemande,
sarabande, and gigue in b-minor. One can also discern thematic
relations in pieces with different tonalities, such as preludes in
a- and b-minor, sarabandes in a- and b-minor, and fantaisie en
rondeau in g-minor. In the manuscript his name "M. De Ste Colombe,
le fils"is affixed only at the end of the e-minor, a-minor, and
b-minor suites. In the suite in g-minor, which has its last two
movements cut off by the introduction of another suite, and in the
pieces in f-minor, his name appears at the end of each separate
movement.

The Tombeau de Mr de Sainte-Colombe le pere, written in honor
of his father, is in its sweep and expressive density one of the
most remarkable pieces in the viol repertoire of the period. Moving
away from the lutenist tradition in which a tombeau was nearly
always an allemande or a pavane, it can be compared in its complex
form with some of the great preludes for solo viol by Sainte Colombe
the elder, and bears direct comparison with the celebrated Tombeau
for two viols, but is even of a vaster scale. The descending motif
in parallel thirds in the first part may stem from Charon's call
in the earlier Tombeau; certainly the lively, unexpected dance that
ends the piece, coming after the Despair section, echoes the Joys
of Elysium which concludes the earlier piece.